Part 3

"Like I couldn't have come down and helped you to-day! Believe me--when I was in the store with papa, Abie, we wasn't so up-to-date; but none of 'em got away."

"I should know when Mrs. Abrahams wants shoes--five times a week she comes in to be sociable."

"I used to say to papa: 'Always leave a customer to go take a new one's shoes off; and then go back and take your time! Two customers in their stockinged feet is worth more than one in a new pair of shoes!' Abie, you don't look right. You'll tell me the truth if you don't feel well, won't you? I always say to have the doctor in time saves nine. If poor papa had listened to me--"

"I'm all right, mamma. Why don't you sit down by me? Don't light the gas--for why should you make it hotter? Come, sit down by me."

"I go put the oven light out. Apple-pie I was baking for you yet; for myself I don't need supper--I had coffee at five o'clock."

Dusk entered the little apartment and crowded the furniture into phantoms; a red signal light from the skeleton of the elevated road threw a glow as mellow as firelight across the mantelpiece. Mrs. Ginsburg's canary rustled himself until he swelled up twice too fat and performed the ever-amazing ritual of thrusting his head within himself as if he would prey on his own vitals. The cooler breath of night; the smells of neighboring food; the more frequent rushing of trains, and a navy-blue sky, pit-marked with small stars, came all at once. In the hallway Mrs. Ginsburg worked the hook of the telephone impatiently up and down.

"Audubon 6879! Hello! Washeims' residence? Yetta? Yes, this is Carrie. Ain't it awful? I'm nearly dead with it. Yetta, Abie ain't feeling so well; so we won't be up to-night. No--it ain't nothing but the heat; but I worry enough, I can tell you."

"Mamma, don't holler in the telephone so--she can't hear you when you scream."

"It's always something, ain't it? That's what I tell him; but he's like his poor papa before him--he's afraid no one can do nothing but him; his little snip of a clerk he gives a vacation, but none for himself. I'm glad we ain't going then; you always make yourself so much trouble. It's too hot to eat, Abie says. Beef with horseradish sauce I had for supper, too--and apple-pie I baked in the heat for him; but not a bite will that boy eat! And when he don't eat I know he ain't feeling well. Who? Beulah? Ain't that grand? Yes, cooking is always good for a girl to know even if she don't need it. No; I go to work and thicken my gravy with flour and horseradish. Believe me, I cried enough when I did it! _Ach_, Yetta, why should I leave that boy? You can believe me when I tell you that not one night except when he was took in at the lodge--not one night since poor papa died--has that boy left me at home alone. Not one step will he take without me."

"Aw, mamma!"

"Sometimes I say, 'Abie, go out like other boys and see the girls.' But he thinks if he ain't home to fix the windows and the covers for my rheumatism it ain't right. Yes; believe me, when your children ain't feeling well it's worry enough."

"Aw, maw, I can take you up to the Washeims' if you want to go."

"You ought to hear him in there, Yetta--fussing because I want to keep him laying down. Yes, I go with you; to-morrow at nine I meet you down by Fulton Street. Up round here they're forty-two cents. Ain't it so? And I used two whites and a yolk in my pie-dough. Yes; I hope so too. If not I call a doctor. Nine o'clock! Good-by, Yetta."

"Maw, for me you shouldn't stay home."

Mrs. Ginsburg flopped into a rocker beside the flowered velvet couch.

"A little broth, Abie?"

"No."

"When you don't eat it's something wrong."

"You needn't fan me, mamma--I ain't hot now."

Insidious darkness crept into the room like a cool hand descending on the feverish brow of day; the red glow shifted farther along the mantel and lay vivid as blood across the blue vase and the photograph of a grizzled head in a seashell frame. Mrs. Ginsburg rocked over a loose board in the floor and waved a palm-leaf fan toward the reclining shadow of her son until he could taste its tape-bound edge.

"Next week to-night five years since we lost poor papa, Abie--five years! _Gott!_ When I think of it! Just like his picture he looked up to the last, too--just like his picture."

"Yes, mamma."

"I ain't so spry as I used to be, neither, Abie--or, believe me, I would never let you take on a clerk. Sometimes I think, when the rheumatism gets up round my heart, it won't be long as I go too. Poor papa! If I could have gone with him! How he always hated to go alone to places! To the barber he hated to go, till I got so I could cut it myself."

"Mamma, you ain't got nothing to worry about."

"I worry enough."

"You can take it as easy as you want to now--I even want we should have a better apartment. We got the best little business between here and One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street! If poor papa could see it now he wouldn't know it from five years ago. Poor papa! He wasn't willing to spend on improvements."

"Papa always said you had a good business head on you, Abie; but I ain't one, neither, for funny businesses like a clerk. And what you needed them new glass shoe-stands for when the old ones--"

"Now, mamma, don't begin on that again."

"When I was down in the store papa used to say to me: 'Wait till Abie's grown up, mamma! By how his ears stand out from his head I can tell he's got good business sense.' And to think that so little of you he had in the store--such a man that deserved the best of everything! He had to die just when things might have got easy for him."

"Don't cry, mamma; everything is for the best."

"You're a good boy, Abie. Sometimes I think I stand in your way enough."

"Such talk!"

"Any girl would do well enough for herself to get you. Believe me, Beulah Washeim don't need a new pair of shoes every two weeks for nothing! Her mother thinks I don't notice it--she's always braggin' to me how hard her Beulah is on shoes and what a good customer she makes."

"Beulah Washeim! I don't even know what last she wears--that's how much I think of Beulah Washeim."

"Don't let me stand in your way, Abie. Ain't I often told you, now since you do a grand business and we're all paid up, don't let your old mother stand in your way?"

"Like you could be in my way!"

"Once I said to poor papa, the night we paid the mortgage off and had wine for supper: 'Papa,' I said, 'we're out of debt now--_Gott sei Dank!_--except one debt we owe to some girl when Abie grows up; and that debt we got to pay with money that won't come from work and struggle and saving; we got to pay that debt with our boy--with _blood-money_.' Poor papa! Already he was asleep when I said it--half a glass of wine, and he was mussy-headed."

"Yes, yes, mamma."

"A girl like Beulah Washeim I ain't got so much use for neither--with her silk petticoats and silk stockings; but Sol Washeim's got a grand business there, Abie. They don't move in a nine-room house from a four-room apartment for nothing."

"For Beulah's weight in gold I don't want her--the way she looks at me with her eyes and shoots 'em round like I was a three-ringed circus."

"You're right--for money you shouldn't marry neither; only I always say it's just as easy to fall in love with a rich one as a poor one. But I'm the last one to force you. There's Hannah Rosenblatt--a grand, economical girl!"

"Hannah Rosenblatt--a girl that teaches school, she pushes on me. I got to get educated yet!"

Mrs. Ginsburg rocked and fanned rhythmically; her unsubtle lips curled upward with the subtle smile of a zingaro. The placidity of peace on a mountain-top, shade in a dell, and love in a garden crept into her tones.

"I just want you to know I don't stand in your way, Abie. You ain't a child no more; but while I'm here you got so good a home as you want--not?"

"Sure!"

"Girls you can always get--not? Girls nowadays ain't what they used to be neither. I'd like to see a girl do to-day for papa what I did--how I was in the store and kitchen all at once; then we didn't have no satin-shoe clerks! Girls ain't what they used to be; in my day working-girls had no time for fine-smelling cologne-water and--"

"All girls ain't alike, mamma--satin shoes cost no more nowadays as leather. We got a dollar-ninety-eight satin pump, you wouldn't believe it--and such a seller! All girls ain't alike, mamma."

"What you mean, Abie?"

Mr. Ginsburg turned on the couch so that his face was close to the wall, and his voice half lost in the curve of his arm.

"Well, once in a while you come across a girl that ain't--ain't like the rest of 'em. Well, there ought to be girls that ain't like the rest of 'em, oughtn't there?"

Mrs. Ginsburg's rocking and fanning slowed down a bit; a curious moment fell over the little room; a nerve-tingling quiescence that in its pregnant moment can race the mind back over an eternity--a silence that is cold with sweat, like the second when a doctor removes his stethoscope from over a patient's left breast and looks at him with a film of pity glazing his eyes.

"What you mean, Abie? Tell mamma what you mean. I ain't the one to stand in your light." Mrs. Ginsburg's speech clogged in her throat.

"You know you always got a home with me, mamma. You know, no matter what comes, I always got to tuck you in bed at night and fix the windows for you. You know you always got with me the best kind of a home I got to give you. Ain't it?"

His hand crept out and rested lightly--ever so lightly--on his mother's knee.

"Abie, you never talked like this before--I won't stand in your way, Abie. If you can make up your mind, Beulah Washeim or Hannah Rosenblatt, either would be--"

"Aw, mamma, it ain't them."

Mrs. Ginsburg's hand closed tightly over her son's; a train swooped past and created a flurry of warm breeze in the room.

"Who--is--it, Abie? Don't be afraid to tell mamma."

"Why, mamma, it ain't no one! Can't a fellow just talk? You started it, didn't you? I was just talking 'cause you was."

"He scares me yet! No consideration that boy has got for his mother! Abie, a little broth--you ain't got no fever, Abie--your head is cool like ice."

"You ain't had no supper yet, mamma."

"I had coffee at five o'clock; for myself I never worry. I'm glad enough you feel all right. It's eight o'clock, Abie--I go me to bed. To-morrow I go to market with Yetta."

"Aw, mamma, now why for do you--"

"I ain't too proud--such high-toned notions I ain't got. For what I pay forty-two cents for eggs up here when I can get 'em for thirty-eight?"

"Be careful, mamma; don't fall over the chair--you want a light?"

"No. Write me a note for the milkman, Abie, before you go to bed, and leave it out with the bottles--half a pint of double cream I want. I make you cream-potatoes for supper to-morrow. I laid your blue shirt on your bed, Abie--don't go to bed on it. It's the last time I iron it; but once more you can wear it, then I make dust-rags. I ironed it soft like you like."

"Yes, mamma."

"Put the cover on the canary, too, Abie. That night you went to the lodge he chirped and chirped, just like you was lost and he was crying 'cause me and him was lonely."

"Yes, mamma. Wait till I light the gas in your room for you--you'll stumble."

"It's too hot for light; I can see by the Magintys' kitchen light across the air-shaft. What she does in her kitchen so late I don't know--such housekeeping! Yesterday with my own eyes I seen her shake a table-cloth out the window with a hole like my hand in it. She should know what I think of such ways."

Mrs. Ginsburg moved through the gloom, steering carefully round the phantom furniture. From his place on the couch her son could hear her moving about her tiny room adjoining the kitchen. A shoe dropped and, after a satisfying interval, another; the padding of bare feet across a floor; the tink of a china pitcher against its bowl; the slam of a drawer; the rusty squeal of spiral bed-springs under pressure.

"Abie, I'm ready."

When Mr. Ginsburg groped into his mother's room she lay in the casual attitude of sleep, but the yellow patch of light from the shaft fell across her open eyes and gray wisps of hair that lay on her pillow like a sickly aura.

"Good night, Abie. You're a good boy, Abie."

"Good night, mamma. A sheet ain't enough--you got to have the blue-and-white quilt on you, too."

"Don't, Abie--do you want to suffocate me? I can't stand so much. Take off the quilt."

"Your rheumatism, you know, mamma--you'll see how much cooler it will get in the night."

"_Ach_, Abie, leave that window all the way up. So hot, and that boy closes me up like--"

"When the lace curtain blows in it means you're in a draught, mamma--half-way open you can have it, but not all. Without me to fuss you'd have a fine rheumatism--like it ain't dangerous for you to sleep where there's enough draught to blow the curtain in."

"Abie, if you don't feel good, in two minutes I can get up and heat the broth if--"

"I'm grand, mamma. Here, I move this chair so the light from Magintys' don't shine in your eyes."

"What she does in her kitchen so late I don't know. Good night, Abie. In the dark you look like poor papa. How he used to fuss round the room at night fixing me just like you--poor papa, Abie--not? Poor papa?"

"Good night, mamma."

Mr. Ginsburg leaned over and kissed his mother lightly on the forehead.

"Double cream did you say I should write the milkman?"

"Yes--and, Abie, don't forget to cover the bird."

"Yes. Here, I leave the door half-way open, mamma. Good night."

"Abie! Abie!"

"Yes?"

"Oh, it ain't nothing at all, Abie--never mind."

"I'm right here, mamma. Anything you want me to do?"

"Nothing. Good night, Abie."

"Good night, mamma."

* * * * *

At eight-fifteen Monday morning Miss Ruby Cohn blew into the Ginsburg & Son's shoe store like a breath of thirty-nine-cents-an-ounce perfume shot from a strong-spray atomizer. The street hung with the strong breath of Mayflower a full second after her small, tall-heeled feet had crossed its soft asphalt.

At the first whiff Mr. Ginsburg drew the upper half of his body out from a case of misses' ten-button welt soles he was unpacking and smiled as if Aurora and spring, and all the heyday misses that Guido Reni and Botticelli loved to paint, had suddenly danced into his shop.

"Well, well, Miss Ruby, are you back?"

Miss Cohn titillated toward the rear of the store, the tail of a cockatoo titillated at a sharp angle from her hat, a patent-leather handbag titillated from a long cord at her wrist, and a smile iridescent as sunlight on spray played about her lips. She placed her hand blinker-fashion against her mouth as if she would curb the smile.

"Don't tell anybody, Mr. Ginsburg, and I'll whisper you something. Listen! I ain't back; I'm shooting porcelain ducks off the shelf in a china shop."

"Ah, you're back again with your fun, ain't you? Miss Ruby--believe me--I missed you enough. I bet you had a grand time at the farm!"

Mr. Ginsburg shook hands with her shyly, with a sudden red in his face, and as if her fingers were holy with the dust of a butterfly's wings and he feared to brush it off.

"Say, Mr. Ginsburg, you should have seen me! What I think of a shoe-tree after laying all yesterday afternoon under a oak-tree next to a brook that made a noise like playing a tune on wine-glasses, I'd hate to tell you. Say, you're unpacking them ten-button welts, ain't you? Good! It ain't too soon for the school stock."

Miss Cohn withdrew two super-long, sapphire-headed hat-pins from her super-small hat, slid out of a tan summer-silk jacket, dallied with the froth of white frills at her throat, ran her fingers through the flame of her hair and turned to Mr. Ginsburg. Her skin was like thick cream and smattered with large, light-brown freckles, which enhanced its creaminess as a crescent of black plaster laid against a lady's cheek makes fairness fairer.

"Well, how's business? I've come back feeling like I could sell storm rubbers to a mermaid."

"You look grand for certain, Miss Ruby. They just can't look any grander'n you. Believe me, I missed you enough! To-day it's cool; but the day before yesterday you can know I was done up when I closed before six."

"Can you beat it? And I was laying flat on the grass, with ants running up my sleeves and down my neck and wishing for my sealskin--it was so cool. I see Herschey's got cloth-tops in his windows. What's the matter with us springing them patent-tip kids? Say, I got a swell idea for a window comin' home on the train--lookin' at the wheat-fields made me think of it."

"Whatta you know about that? Wheat-fields made her think of a shoe window--like a whip she is--so sharp!"

"It's a yellow season, Mr. Ginsburg; and we can use them old-oak stands and have a tan school window that'll make every plate-glass front between here and One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street look like a Sixth Avenue slightly worn display."

"Good! You can have just what kind of a window you like, Miss Ruby--just anything you--you like. After such a summer we can afford such a fall window as we want. I see the Busy Bee's got red-paper poppies in theirs--something like that, maybe, with--"

"Nix on paper flowers for us! I got a china-silk idea from a little drummer I met up in the country--one nice little fellow! I wonder if you know him? Simon Leavitt; he says he sold you goods. Simon Leavitt. Know him?"

"No."

"One nice little fellow!"

Silence.

"I missed you lots, Miss Ruby. When Saturday came I said to mamma: 'How I miss that girl! Only one month she's been with us, but how I miss that girl!' Oh--eh, Miss Ruby!"

Miss Cohn adjusted a pair of tissue-paper sleevelets and smoothed her smooth tan hips as if she would erase them entirely; then she looked up at him delicately, and for the instant the pink aura of her hair and the rise and fall of her too high bosom gave her some of the fleshly beauty of a Flora.

"Like you had time to think of me! I bet the Washeim girl was in every other day for a pair of--"

"Now, Miss Ruby, you--"

"'Sh! There's some one out front. It's that cashier from Truman's grocery. You finish unpacking that case, Mr. Ginsburg. I'll wait on her. I bet she wants tango slippers."

Miss Cohn flitted to the front of the store as rapidly as the span of her narrow skirt would permit, and Mr. Ginsburg dived deep into the depths of his wooden case. But in his nostrils, in the creases of his coat, and in the recesses of his heart was the strong breath of the Mayflower; and in the phantasmagoria of bonfire-colored hair and cream-colored skin, and the fragrance of his own emotions, he bent so dreamily over the packing-case that the blood rushed as if by capillary attraction to his temples; and when he staggered to an upright posture large black blotches were doing an elf dance before his eyes.

"Mr. Ginsburg! Oh, Mr. Ginsburg!"

"Yes, Miss Ruby."

From the highest rung of a ladder, parallel with the top row of a wall of shoe-boxes, Miss Cohn poised like a humming-bird.

"Say, have we got any more of them 4567 French heel, chiffon rosette?"

"Yes, Miss Ruby--right there under the 5678's."

"Sure enough. Never mind coming out; I can find 'em--yes, here they are."

From her height she smiled down at him, pushed her ladder leftward along its track, clapped a shoe-box under her arm, and hurried down, her shoe-buttoner jangling from a pink ribbon at her waist-line. Mr. Ginsburg delved deeper.

"Mr. Ginsburg!"

"Yes, Miss Ruby."

"Just a moment, please--there's a lady out here wants low-cuts, and I'm busy with a customer. Front, please--just this way, madam. I'll have some one to wait on you in a moment."

Mr. Ginsburg clapped his hands dry of dust, wriggled into his unlined alpaca coat, brushed his plush-like hair with his palms, and advanced to the front of the store. His voice was lubricated with the sweet-oil of willing servitude.

"What can I do for you, madam? Low-cuts for yourself?"

He straddled a stool and took the foot in the cup of his hand. Beside him on a similar stool that brought their heads parallel Miss Ruby smoothed her hand across her customer's instep.

"Ain't that effect great, Mr. Ginsburg, with that swell little rosette? I was just telling this young lady if I had her instep I'd never wear anything but our dancing-shoes."

"It certainly is swell," agreed Mr. Ginsburg, peering into the lining of the shoe he removed to read its size.

The day's tide quickened; the yellow benches, with ceiling fans purring over them, were filled with rows of trade who tamped the floor with shiny, untried soles, bent themselves double to feel of toe and instep, and walked the narrow strip of green felt as if on clay feet they feared would break.

Came noon and afternoon. Miss Cohn ascended and descended the ladder with the agility of a street vender's mechanical toy, shoes tucked under each arm, and a pencil at a violent angle in the nest of her hair.

"Have we got any more of them 543 flat heels, Mr. Ginsburg?"

"Yes, Miss Ruby--right there in back of you."

"Say, you'd think I was using my eyes for something besides seeing, wouldn't you? Wait on that lady next, Mr. Ginsburg. She wants white kids."

"Certainly."

"Yes'm; we sell lots of them russet browns. It's a little shoe that gives satisfaction every time. Mr. Ginsburg is always ordering more. I wore a pair of them for two years myself. There ain't no wear-out to them. We carry that in stock, too, and it keeps them like new--just rub with a flannel cloth--fifteen cents a bottle. Just a moment, madam; I'll be over to you as soon as I'm finished here. Mr. Ginsburg, take off that lady's shoe and show her a pair of them dollar-ninety-eight elastic sides while I finish with this lady. Sure, you can have 'em by five, madam. Name? Hornschein, 3456 Eighth Avenue? Dollar-eighty out of two. Thank you! Call again. Now, madam, what can I do for you? Yes, we have them in moccasins in year-old size--sixty cents, and grand and soft for their little feet. Wait; I'll see. Mr. Ginsburg, have we got those 672 infants' in pink?"

"Sure thing. Wait, Miss Ruby--I'll climb for you. I have to go up anyway."

"Aw, you're busy with your own customers. Don't trouble."

"Nothing's trouble when it's for you, Miss Ruby. Show her those tassel tops, too."

"Oh, Mr. Ginsburg, ain't you the kidder, though! Yes'm; the tassel tops are eighty. Ain't they the cutest little things?"

At six o'clock a medley of whistles shrieked out the eventide--clarions that ripped upward like sky-rockets in flight; hard-throated soprano whistles that juggled with the topmost note like a colorature diva. The oak benches emptied, Mr. Ginsburg raised the front awning and kicked the carpet-covered brick away from the door, so that it swung quietly closed; daubed at his wrists and collar-top with a damp handkerchief.

"First breathing space we've had to-day, ain't it, Miss Ruby?"

Miss Cohn flopped down on a bench and breathed heavily; her hair lay damp on her temples; the ruffles at her neck were limp as the ruff of a Pierette the morning after the costume ball.

"You should worry, Mr. Ginsburg! With such a business next year at this time you'll have two clerks and more breathing space than you got breath."

Mr. Ginsburg seated himself carefully beside her at a wide range, so that a customer for a seven-E last could have fitted in between them.

"I've built up a good business here, Miss Ruby. The trouble with poor papa was he was afraid to spend, and he was afraid of novelties. I couldn't learn him that a windowful of satin pumps helps swell the storm-rubber sale. Those little dollar-ninety-eights look swell on your feet, Miss Ruby; you're a good advertisement for the stock--not?"